"Right you har', guv'nor"; and the mob disappeared. And thus ended the riot of the slouch-cap against the silk hat. To-day, if you are passing the field during a match, you will see that the gamins are still there, but they shout only for Westminster.
We were just turning away, when Basil Norman laid his hand on Grubbs's forearm, as a girl might do, and his eyes had a wistful look.
"Before I change into more fitting garb," he said airily, then paused…. My breathing seemed to stop at the sight—his face had gone suddenly white, and his eyes were glazed.
"Grubbs!" he cried, and his voice sounded hollow. "Don't you understand?… Oh, you damned fool, can't you see it's my heart?"
V
After Westminster I went to Cambridge, and succeeded in cultivating the Oxford manner, by which all Cambridge men are known. When I emerged from there I offered myself to the highest bidder (a sudden bankruptcy of my father having made an occupation essential).
A London newspaper was the fortunate winner in the mad race for my services, though it would have been difficult for it to lose, as there was but one entry.
I became a writer of power—not quite so much so as the gentleman to-day who wields his pen as he would a bludgeon, and succeeds in writing a powerful article each week; but still I was a writer of strength. I damned the present, doubted the future, and deplored the past. I became an honored member of the group of London writers whose entire genius is exhausted in criticism. I secured a bowing acquaintance with Bernard Shaw, and always spoke of H. G. Wells as Mr. Wells. It was obvious to me that to achieve literary success in England one must abuse England—but especially any one who tried to change her.
Some of my confrères sided with Bernard Shaw and attacked middle-class morality and patriotism. Mr. Arnold Bennett had a certain following, though we agreed that his Five Towns stories were not really critical, but merely observant. We did not know at the time that he had it in him to write The Pretty Lady, which was to be neither. For myself, I was drawn towards Mr. Wells, and hit at everything like a blindfolded pugilist.
We agreed with Granville Barker that Irving had reduced the value of Shakespeare by over-staging; and we endorsed the opinion of a dramatic critic, known to the public as "Jingle," who said that Shakespeare's lines were often worthy of an Oxford undergraduate.